Are men… back?
Plus, whales with septum piercings.
I’m a pop girl professor: Gaga is my queen, Zara lays in wait. So why, this year, did I suddenly gravitate towards what I once hated: men with guitars singing. Did men get better this year? Or did I get so gay that I started to straighten out a little?
Sombr topped my Apple Music Replay this year (It’s no Spotify Wrapped, but at least it’s not as embarrassing as being a Tidal subscriber). He snuck into my life around early summer, a month or so before I went to LA to interview him. He was all swagger and sex appeal, and makes crisp rock-pop that has cursed me ever since. I saw him live last month. I get it.
I even caught the Cameron Winter bug like the rest of us. Then came Jake Minch, this Connecticut kid who writes songs that sound like they would fit on the Juno soundtrack. My friend Fred Roberts, also a songwriter, recommended him to me. Jake’s debut album George came out in July and I’ve found myself being moved by it like I’m my 15-year-old self, pretending to be heartbroken by a girl I dated reluctantly for six months. If I was to put money on any singer-songwriter boy breaking out in 2026, it would probably be him. Or it might be Dove Ellis, the elusive Irish lad whose voice is thick and rich and weirdly historic.
I don’t think many of these singer-songwriter outfits are remarkable (though I have heard of many full face weeping at Cameron Winter’s Carnegie Hall show), but there’s a self sufficiency to them that feels like the cold side of the girlie-pop pillow. For the most part, those behemoth pop songs are team efforts, but there’s an atelier-like craft to some guys and some instruments. These boys with guitars feel impressive and necessary now because they are masters of melody, building it into grand emotions that feel far bigger than the bedrooms and dingy studios they were born in. Are men back? In a way it looks like it. 2025 has ended and you still don’t know Alex Warren, but he has a Grammy nomination and you don’t.
Yesterday morning I caught a screening of the new and unbelievably long (3h18mins) Avatar: Fire and Ash. It was exactly what I thought it would be—a good looking, thrillingly violent, low-key sort of sexy film about spiritual warfare in space. But there was one thing that took me by surprise. The space whales from the last movie, do you remember them? Yeah, this time they look like they have just returned from a My Chemical Romance concert and I can’t explain why.
Most people remember Payakan, this space whale who can communicate with the Na’vi, from The Way of Water. It’s not even slightly anthropomorphic. It’s just a hunk of whale meat with two eyes on each side of its head that moans a little, with subtitles telling us what it’s saying. (Much memed highlight: “It’s too painful.”) That was weird enough, but in Fire and Ash these bigger, older whales rock up donning tribal pattern tattoos and, no joke, septum and eyebrow piercings. If there was a pair of baggy skater jeans and Osiris sneakers big enough to fit them, they’d be wearing those too.
F*CKED UP THINGS IN AVATAR 3
Emo whales
The white kid from the last one still having dreadlocks.
Anyway, for those who like these kinds of things I’d say go see it. I had a blast! It’s out on Friday.
The death of Rob Reiner has reignited my passion for Stand By Me, the coming-of-age movie he directed nearly 40 years ago. I remember using my first-ever debit card to buy a copy of it on DVD with my birthday money. I was 12-years old and barely knew what good movies were. I felt like it might speak to me, as a weird outlier with ambitions to be a writer, growing up in a town that felt far from everything. When I watched it first, by myself on a tiny TV, it was one of those summer nights in Scotland where it stays light until late, and I returned to it on what felt like a monthly basis for the year that followed. River Phoenix immediately became my north star—his performance in it feels like the work of a man three times his age.
I first met Emma Laird a year ago when we did a portfolio story on actors we were excited about, and she was promoting The Brutalist. 12 months on, she’s in the smart, spoofy period romcom Fackham Hall, and next month will appear in 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, playing a savage disciple of a murderous lunatic.
I asked her: What’s something you would never put in your house?
She gave me two answers:
“Men and plastic.”
The team behind Together for Palestine have compiled a supergroup of musicians to record and release “Lullaby,” a charity single to support children suffering in Gaza. Buy it here.
Need to start dressing like homegirl at the library.
Spotted on the tube: a woman drafting what she was going to write on her Christmas cards in her Notes app. What happened to the beauty of instinct?
DMed 🍇